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Product Description
Product Description
Would you brave gun-toting militias for a cut and blow dry?
May's a tough-talking, hard-smoking, lecturer in English. She's also an Iraqi from a Sunni-Shi'ite background living in Baghdad, dodging bullets before breakfast, bargaining for high heels in bombed-out bazaars and battling through blockades to reach her class of Jane Austen-studying girls. Bee, on the other hand, is a London mum of three, busy fighting off PTA meetings and chicken pox, dealing with dead cats and generally juggling work and family while squabbling with her globe-trotting husband over the socks he leaves lying around the house.
They should have nothing in common.
But when a simple email brings them together, they discover a friendship that overcomes all their differences of culture, religion and age. Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad is the story of two women who share laughter and tears, and swap their confidences, dreams and fears. And, between the grenades, the gossip, the jokes and the secrets, they also hatch an ingenious plan to help May escape the bombings of Baghdad . . .
About the Author
Bee Rowlatt is a former show-girl turned BBC World Service journalist. A mother of three and would-be do-gooder, she can find keeping her career going while caring for her three daughters (and husband) pretty tough, even in leafy North London.
May Witwit is an Iraqi expert in Chaucer and sender of emails depicting kittens in fancy dress. She is prepared to face every hazard imaginable to make that all-important hairdresser's appointment.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
So often we see the headlines "Baghdad Bomb Kills 30" "Suicide Bombers Strike Again" and although we're concerned and moved it's just so hard to understand how it must feel to live through a war day after day.
This book reveals the reality of a life lived in a war zone. For May explosions and murders are a constant part of her daily life in a way that would have us running for our post traumatic stress counsellor. But May has no choice but to get on with her life, this book shows us just how hard and painful that is. Her friend Bee does have a choice and unlike most of us she's prepared to get involved and to really try to help May.
So it's an inspiring and moving story of two strong, brave women.
Yet it's also a laugh out loud funny, amazingly candid "warts and all' look into two womens lives. I really enjoyed reading this book and I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone.
This book reveals the reality of a life lived in a war zone. For May explosions and murders are a constant part of her daily life in a way that would have us running for our post traumatic stress counsellor. But May has no choice but to get on with her life, this book shows us just how hard and painful that is. Her friend Bee does have a choice and unlike most of us she's prepared to get involved and to really try to help May.
So it's an inspiring and moving story of two strong, brave women.
Yet it's also a laugh out loud funny, amazingly candid "warts and all' look into two womens lives. I really enjoyed reading this book and I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
When I first heard of this book I was inclined to ignore it as another 'jumping on the bandwagon' book using a title too similar to 'Reading Lolita in Tehran'. When BBC Radio 4 did an adaptation I loved it so much I ordered the book though perhaps 'book' is the wrong way to describe this - it's just a collection of emails gathered over several years of friendship between a UK-based journalist and an Iraqi academic.
The emails track the growth of their friendship and their campaign to get May and her husband Ali out of Iraq and over to the UK. The best bits are the details of everyday life - dodgy militia to get a hair cut, covering up when your baby daughter pees herself in the photo processor's shop - and the frustrations of dealing with beaurocracy.
There's nothing actually wrong with this book it's just - in my opinion - it's much too long. If you got access to my email account and wanted to read my mails to friends it would probably seem quite interesting to start with. But after 370 pages of letters back and forth, I couldn't help but thinking there was a great 200 page book tucked between the covers and 170 pages of filler and fluff. I have no objection to long books but when there's little plot and just the exchange of the minutiae of everyday life, it feels like a mountain to climb to keep plodding through.
I take my hat off to whoever it was that abridged this for the BBC series - I wish that Bee and May had been willing to give an editor a little more free reign with a red pen. Had they done so this might well have been a 5 star read rather than a 3 star drag.
The emails track the growth of their friendship and their campaign to get May and her husband Ali out of Iraq and over to the UK. The best bits are the details of everyday life - dodgy militia to get a hair cut, covering up when your baby daughter pees herself in the photo processor's shop - and the frustrations of dealing with beaurocracy.
There's nothing actually wrong with this book it's just - in my opinion - it's much too long. If you got access to my email account and wanted to read my mails to friends it would probably seem quite interesting to start with. But after 370 pages of letters back and forth, I couldn't help but thinking there was a great 200 page book tucked between the covers and 170 pages of filler and fluff. I have no objection to long books but when there's little plot and just the exchange of the minutiae of everyday life, it feels like a mountain to climb to keep plodding through.
I take my hat off to whoever it was that abridged this for the BBC series - I wish that Bee and May had been willing to give an editor a little more free reign with a red pen. Had they done so this might well have been a 5 star read rather than a 3 star drag.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I really really loved this book! Bee is an English journalist working for the BBC World Service and May is an Iraqi university lecturer. Bee first contacted May to ask if she would give an interview about living conditions in Baghdad since the invasion of the US forces.
They quickly became friends and this book is their collection of emails - back and forth, starting in January 2005 until October 2008.
Bee is a mother of two daughters, pregnant with her third, living and working in London. She is married to Justin and lives a fairly comfortable life, with lots of holidays, friends and parties. Meanwhile, May is coping with life in occupied Baghdad. Married to her second husband and alienated from his family due to religious beliefs. Coping with days with no electricity, bombs, shootings, murders, house searches, no fuel, no freedom and no hope.
The contrast between the two women's lives is immense - yet they become firm friends, calling each other 'sister' and able to talk about anything at all.
May and her husband Ali are desperate to leave Iraq, they want to start a new life together, away from war.
Over the course of the three years of correspondence we follow their battle with authority to gain visas and enough money to see their dream through. Every obstacle imaginable is put in their way. There are times when both women become very despondent and depressed, but there are also times of laughter and joy.
This is a wonderfully well put together book. In e-mail form, honest and no holds barred. It is hard to imagine just what difference the US invasion of Iraq made to the ordinary people living there. May talks about life under the regime of Saddam and how it was often not so bad, and how people have suffered far more since the invasion. She is not condoning Saddam's regime, but life was easier and not so dangerous.
The contrast of Bee's busy London life, bringing up small children whilst working in stressful job is often a welcome distraction from the horrors of life in Baghdad.
This is the true story of a most unlikely friendship, emotional, touching, funny - a wonderful read that I enjoyed very much.
They quickly became friends and this book is their collection of emails - back and forth, starting in January 2005 until October 2008.
Bee is a mother of two daughters, pregnant with her third, living and working in London. She is married to Justin and lives a fairly comfortable life, with lots of holidays, friends and parties. Meanwhile, May is coping with life in occupied Baghdad. Married to her second husband and alienated from his family due to religious beliefs. Coping with days with no electricity, bombs, shootings, murders, house searches, no fuel, no freedom and no hope.
The contrast between the two women's lives is immense - yet they become firm friends, calling each other 'sister' and able to talk about anything at all.
May and her husband Ali are desperate to leave Iraq, they want to start a new life together, away from war.
Over the course of the three years of correspondence we follow their battle with authority to gain visas and enough money to see their dream through. Every obstacle imaginable is put in their way. There are times when both women become very despondent and depressed, but there are also times of laughter and joy.
This is a wonderfully well put together book. In e-mail form, honest and no holds barred. It is hard to imagine just what difference the US invasion of Iraq made to the ordinary people living there. May talks about life under the regime of Saddam and how it was often not so bad, and how people have suffered far more since the invasion. She is not condoning Saddam's regime, but life was easier and not so dangerous.
The contrast of Bee's busy London life, bringing up small children whilst working in stressful job is often a welcome distraction from the horrors of life in Baghdad.
This is the true story of a most unlikely friendship, emotional, touching, funny - a wonderful read that I enjoyed very much.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Great story!
Getting to know these two extraordinary women and their story was amazing. A fantastic read, so intriguing, touching and real. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Susan Weitzman Trifman
Enlightening and uplifting
This is a book of email correspondence between Bee Rowlatt and May Witwit. Bee is a journalist living in London and working for the BBC World Service, and she is put in touch with... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Nicola
Interesting Story But In Need Of An Editor
Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad is a true story told in a collection of emails exchanged between two women, Bee and May. Read more
Published 5 months ago by S O'Hara
long-winded and trivial
This book presents an email exchange between an English journalist and radio presenter (Bee), and an Iraqi woman who teaches English and is in a mixed (Shia / Sunni) marriage,... Read more
Published 6 months ago by H. Ashford
Not sure about this
Heard this on radio 4 and wanted to get it but to be honest I'm not so sure it was worth it. Parts (small parts) were enlightening but at the end I was glad to finish it - not a... Read more
Published 6 months ago by roger
A life out of e-mails !!
I think that this has been one of the most interesting book that I have read for a long time. When one first thinks of e-mails you wonder who it is possible to create a fascinating... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Mr. J. G. A. Dainty
Real life in troubled Iraq
This real life story, told through e-mails between an English woman and an Iraqi academic, gives an enthralling insight into the perils of life in Baghdad during the difficult... Read more
Published 14 months ago by An old bag from Kent
Not so amazing
Several things about this book are amazing.
1. That the Iraqi woman (May) should want to correspond with the vacuous English woman (Bee).
2. Read more
1. That the Iraqi woman (May) should want to correspond with the vacuous English woman (Bee).
2. Read more
Published 14 months ago by secret squirrel
what a great friendship
This gave me a completely different opinion of what it must be like to live in Iraq during the occupation especially if you have grown up in the Western World. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Veronica Walsh
Must Read
Great, great book. It's a true story of two women who become friends through emails sent between London and Baghdad. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Dove
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